For a new Starbucks partner, volunteering at Resource Center in Dallas is a decades-long commitment
Frank Martinez has been giving back to Resource Center and LGBTQ+ community for more than 20 years; now his store is supporting the organization through a Neighborhood Grant from The Starbucks Foundation.
Frank Martinez is the kind of person others count on. Take the time Daniel Sanchez ran short on eggs.
Sanchez supervises nutrition services at Resource Center in Dallas, one of the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning community centers in the country. In addition to a hot meals program, Sanchez oversees a food pantry that serves more than 800 people living with HIV each week. So, when he needs eggs — or fresh produce or canned goods or frozen foods — he needs a lot of them.
That particular time, Sanchez recalls, he put in a call to Martinez, who in turn worked his phone contacts at local grocery stores. The result: 600 dozen eggs, delivered to the center’s doorstep.
“That’s the kind of deal that Frank does all the time,” Sanchez said. “He’s just a loving, caring person. He’s always right there.”
Last year, Martinez began working as a barista at a Dallas Starbucks where his enthusiasm for helping out Resource Center prompted his manager to nominate it for a Neighborhood Grant from The Starbucks Foundation. The Neighborhood Grants program helps build sustained local impact and inspires increased partner volunteerism with nonprofit organizations in communities. Since the program began in 2019, The Starbucks Foundation has contributed more than $5 million to nearly 2,500 nonprofit organizations focused on COVID-19 community response, advancing racial equity and more.
As part of the latest round of Neighborhood Grants, which begins today, The Starbucks Foundation will award $2 million total to more than 1,000 local nonprofit organizations across the U.S. and Canada. This giving initiative is unique in that Starbucks partners inform The Starbucks Foundation to how to make meaningful community contributions. It’s one of the ways Starbucks partners have strengthened their communities for decades, such as through holding clothing drives for unsheltered families, doing giving trees in stores, hosting events for military families, donating meals to local food banks and writing notes of encouragement to front-line responders.
Martinez, 49, has been volunteering for Resource Center for more than two decades. As a young gay man in his early 20s, he first sought out the center’s HIV education and prevention services after moving to Dallas from his hometown, Houston.
“Twenty-five years ago, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still very scary,” Martinez said. “The best way to combat that was to get educated about it.”
The center grew out of a foundation formed in 1983 to advocate for equal rights for the gay and lesbian community. As AIDS began its rampage, the founders mobilized to help the community survive.
Today Resource Center remains the primary HIV/AIDS organization in North Texas. It also now offers an array of programs for middle- and high-school LGBTQ kids, seniors, women, Black men, and transgender and gender non-conforming adults. The programs aim to combat isolation, promote mental health and generally foster community.
‘I needed to find something to give back to’
From the beginning, Martinez wanted to do his part to help, too. Soon after arriving in Dallas he’d landed a good job as a bartender at one of the town’s popular gay bars. His way of celebrating his good fortune? Pass it on.
“When good things started happening to me, I felt I needed to find something to give back to,” he said.
Martinez said he’s found a sense of purpose in the volunteer work he does for the Resource Center community.
“It’s very grounding,” he said. “Any time I think I’m having a challenge in my day or in my life, I help someone whose challenge is so much greater — and they’re handling it with such grace. It’s inspiring.”
Martinez, in turn, has inspired others, including partners from his store who have volunteered with Resource Center. Recently, Starbucks recognized him as a “Community Champion” for the difference he has made and his impact on the community.
“Frank is a true servant leader who builds deep connections with people in the community and continually strives to help support them in the best way possible,” wrote his district manager, Maleah Moran.
Martinez and his husband, Michael Albee — now also a Starbucks barista at a different Dallas location — even chose to have their 2017 wedding at Resource Center. If they were going to pay to rent a venue anyway, they wanted their money to go back to the community. They encouraged guests who wanted to give them gifts to donate to the center instead and set out vases at each table to serve as tip jars for donations.
Martinez’s heart lies with the center’s food program, especially at Thanksgiving. The center holds its Thanksgiving meal early in the week to allow its staff and volunteers time off with their families, sending clients home with extra groceries to tide them over the long weekend. But Martinez hated the thought of anyone spending Thanksgiving Day alone.
So 10 years ago, he helped organize a meal on the holiday itself at the Round-Up Saloon and Dance Hall (voted the nation’s best gay country-western bar), where he worked. He and his fellow volunteers passed out fliers at Resource Center’s meal earlier in the week. Then, back at the saloon, they covered pool tables with plywood to hold the bounty of donated and volunteer-prepared food, with Igloo coolers of iced tea and Kool-Aid set out on the bar.
The first year they drew 50 people. By 2019, they fed 400.
“Clients from different agencies would go to the Round-Up,” said Joey Avila, a longtime Resource Center volunteer who attended Thanksgiving dinner there himself. “The homeless people in the neighborhood would go. Word got out, and homeless people downtown would take the bus in. Everybody would leave full and happy.”
With sit-down tables and entertainment, the Thanksgiving event didn’t feel like a soup kitchen — it felt like dinner and a show.
Creating community, even in a pandemic
Then in March 2020, a new epidemic— COVID-19 — struck. Both Resource Center and Martinez stepped up yet again.
The center’s nutrition team is giving out more food than ever. For now, everything is bagged and picked up curbside. But Daniel Sanchez is working hard to keep the sense of empowerment and community that the center has always encouraged.
“We are doing virtual cooking classes,” he said. “A lot of our clients felt isolated and alone. The cooking classes made them feel connected again. We find ways to reach out even for a brief moment. When they come to get food, we get to see them, even if it’s curbside.”
Last November, Martinez knew he could not safely host his usual Thanksgiving gathering. But his longtime volunteers and the businesses that always donated still turned to him. He realized that they were counting on him just as much as the people he had fed were.
“People rely on me to organize something,” he said. “They want to know they’ve done something at the end of the holiday season. That feeling was there this holiday season more than ever. I thought, ‘There must be something I can do.’”
So, organize he did. Giant tents, outfitted with portable heaters, arose behind the Round-Up and the nearby JR’s Bar and Grill. Volunteers and businesses donated coats, blankets, nonperishable food, toiletries and bottles of then-impossible-to-find hand sanitizer to give away.
And this time Martinez had help not just from his bartending friends but from colleagues at his Starbucks store.
The response, he said, was overwhelming.
“It wasn’t what we normally did, but it was the next best thing to do,” he said. “And to see my fellow partners come out to represent Starbucks …” Martinez paused, his voice welling with emotion. “They knew it wasn’t going to be glamorous. It was going to be cold. It was going to be outside. They did it with grace and smiles.”
Martinez, as usual, took inspiration from the effort. 2020 had been a challenging year, personally and professionally. He was helping his mother care for his aging grandmother. And he had left the Round-Up to move into management at another bar — just in time for the epidemic to close the bar and scuttle the manager job.
Getting hired at Starbucks, he said, “jump-started” him.
“I just feel the company has been so good to me this last year,” said the man who has been so good to so many others. “I’m hoping I can bring my experience with philanthropy and community outreach to do more under the Starbucks umbrella.”
